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One of my friends likes to tell a story about how a lesbian couple opened his eyes to the idea that gender can be a barrier even in a homosexual relationship. That point is the story, of course – he mentioned something to one member of the couple about how it must be nice not…

Arnold Kling recently released a revised version of his most talked-about book: Three Languages of Politics. I think I will buy the revised edition. I think I will buy it because while I’ve read about the model it presents on various blogs, and while that model seems useful to me, I have a number of…

Academics get a lot of flak for inventing artificial problems. For the most part, I chalk this up to laymen being unfamiliar with what academics do. Imagining things as-yet-unencountered-but-potentially-encounterable is a large part of their job description. Getting at hidden parts of our understanding – for which imagining unrealistic situations is surprisingly useful – is…

Life lived as a Libertarian in today’s political order involves a lot of head-scratching. Partly that’s just because you’re an outsider – and anyone who’s outside the mainstream will tend to have a clearer view than others of the mechanisms the mainstream uses to perpetuate itself. For American politics, that means you often notice before…

Jason Brennan posts a thought on secessionism and freedom (inspired by you-know-what), and it’s yet another case in point about why we should be suspicious of the Bleeding Heart Libertarian project. His basic point is sound, if shallow and unhelpful: In the abstract, secession just means replacing one democratic body with a different one. It’s…

Wired has an article about how Yahoo! did so too resist government intrusion into its users’ email accounts. And it actually does make me feel better about the company’s supposed puppydog compliance with unconstitutional data requests – since it turns out it did put up a decent bit of resistance. But here’s the best part…

I’m frequently amused by how weak attempts to dismiss Libertarianism have become. The latest example I’ve seen showed up yesterday on Crooked Timber. It’s a column by John Quiggin titled What’s Left of Libertarianiam?, and it asserts that "The Libertarian Moment" has already passed because … wait for it … gay marriage is already legal…

File this under "shit you can’t make up." Vox Day, who likes to be thought of as a libertarian, wants to execute people for expressing their opinions: But I have a simple and just solution. Just make advocating assisted suicide a capital crime punishable by hanging. This comes on the heels of another statement calling…

The best comment I’ve seen recently on the latest Israel-Gaza needless drama is easily this one from Jared Book S. It was posted in response to Being Classically Liberal‘s latest Israel apologia and should clear up for Libertarians what their position on this should be: The classical liberal problem with Israel/Palestine is that we give…

Arnold Kling has a very interesting post up comparing Progressive political attitudes to being members of an Elect (in the Calvinist sense – but the salient point for Kling is "An elect starts from an assumption of superiority and proceeds from there."). He also speculates on what the conservative and libertarian analogues of this mindset…